Mega-Gargants: Top 10 GIANT Conversion Ideas!
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The Mega-Gargants are up for pre-order! Soon you’ll be able to field a pure Sons of Behemat army but, for me, the most exciting part of this release is the prospect of adding mercenary Mega-Gargants into other Warhammer Age of Sigmar forces. The rules for including them are simple, but by Sigmar there’s so much raw creative potential bound up in this concept.
Where to even begin? Now every faction can include a mercenary Mega-Gargant. By my count there are currently twenty-three (!) factions in the game, so that’s at least twenty-three unique opportunities to convert and theme your slobbering new centrepiece. Twenty-three! And that’s before we take subfactions and realms into account! How many more exclamation marks am I going to need before this paragraph is over?! To avoid this article becoming longer than the unabridged text of the Kharadron Code, I’m going to go ahead and count down the top ten GIANT conversion possibilities that really jump out at me. I’ve saved the best for last, so let’s get into it!
10) Cities of Sigmar - The Mighty Massive Mascot
Each city we know of in the Mortal Realms has its own distinctive character, and what an opportunity the Mega-Gargant presents to apply that character on a massive scale. This one sits at number ten on our list simply because barely any conversion work is needed to make the Mega-Gargant fit right in - just give him a few extra shields to represent the city’s most common troop type, paint them all up in your city’s livery and you’re potentially done.
That said, you could definitely take things further if you had a mind to. Tempest’s Eye is a noble city in the clouds, so why not grab a griffon kit and give your Mega-Gargant a pair of angelic wings? Anvilgard is a murk port city, so perhaps go all-out with the nautical theme, festooning your gargant with barnacles, rotten timber and rigging in the manner of a Necrofex Colossus? How about covering him in the verdant flora and greenery of the Living City? Cities of Sigmar is one of the most adaptable and creative factions in the game, and now that applies to the Mega-Gargant too!
9) Fyreslayers - The Auric Runestomper
Gargants and Fyreslayers share a surprising amount in common. They’re both big-boned, half-naked mercenaries with a fierce temper. The new Mega-Gargant looks set to fit in very nicely indeed with a Fyreslayers force, both aesthetically and thematically (the Warstomper even has a nicely braided beard right out of the box) - but there are one or two extra things the dedicated converter could do to really make their gargant look the part.
Aside from the obvious disparity in height, the biggest visual difference between the Mega-Gargant and your average Fyreslayer is the absence of a plumed helmet. Not the easiest thing in the world to sculpt with green stuff I grant you, but consider this - if your efforts don’t quite match up to duardin workmanship, you can just say that the gargant beat the metal into shape with his fists. Narrative! Add a few ur-gold runes and you’re done.
8) Ogor Mawtribes - The Mountain of Meat
As kindred spirits in the Destruction grand alliance, you really don’t need to do much - or any - work to make a Mega-Gargant fit in with the Ogor Mawtribes. The Gutbusters in particular share a lot of the same design cues. But what about the Beastclaw Raiders? There’s a great opportunity here to add a few choice elements to the Mega-Gargant model to really tie him in nicely with that ‘mountain chic’ look.
Fur is one of the easier things to sculpt, and the Beastclaw Raiders are covered in it, so why not add a few animal hides to your gargant’s panoply of ragged coverings? You could even paint up the Warstomper’s stone club to look like an ice weapon - no conversion work required. What about a sprinkling of snow across the head and shoulders to suggest that the gargant is big and tall enough to form his own micro-climate? And what could be more ogorish than a big old gut-plate? Nothing I say! And with that, your Mega-Gargant is ready for some raiding, Beastclaw style.
7) Gloomspite Gitz - The Troggargant
Ask yourself this - what’s bigger, badder and better than a troggoth? If your answer isn’t ‘a troggoth the size of a gargant’ then you haven’t been paying attention! Just look at the silhouette of the Mega-Gargant and tell me it doesn’t have the makings of a fine oversized troggoth conversion - an ‘ultramegatroggboss’ or a ‘troggargant’ if you will.
Unfortunately it’s not just a matter of a straight head-swap, since the standard troggoth heads will be way too small. Some sculpting will be needed to give the Mega-Gargant’s head and face the bulbous, drooping features that the grots’ cave-dwelling allies are known for. Even more sculpting will be needed to festoon the brute with a veritable forest of mushrooms and other fungus, but what a glorious sight that would be. I’d probably remove most of the clothing and other paraphernalia too, and also bulk out the forearms. Perfection!
6) Beasts of Chaos - The Mega-Gorgant
There’s so much variety in the Beasts of Chaos army (including the existing Chaos Gargant) that the Mega-Gargant pretty much fits right in regardless. And with the Ghorgon and Cygor, the Beasts of Chaos already have bigger and uglier versions of the basic gor stomping around. But are they bigger and uglier enough? Can we fashion a beast that’s even biggerer and uglierer? Yes. Yes we can.
As with the troggargant, the head of a Ghorgon is probably going to be a little on the small side for a Mega-Gargant, but you might just get away with it if you bulk up the area around it with extra neck muscle and a shaggy mane. Or you could try using the head of a Thundertusk or Stonehorn - they’re pretty beasty. Then it’s a case of lopping off the feet, reeplacing them with hooves, and covering the legs, back and shoulders with a sculpted layer of shaggy fur - not too much of a challenge if you have a little experience with green stuff. Plus, this is a creature of Chaos after all, so season to taste with your mutations of choice!
5) Maggotkin of Nurgle - The Very Great Unclean One
There’s a certain breed of Nurgle collector that just loves taking good, clean, honest miniatures and perverting them to the cause of the Plaguefather via the liberal application of green stuff sores, buboes and errant intestinal tracts. The bigger the model, the broader the canvas upon which to sculpt all manner of horrific afflictions.
I think it’s safe to say that there’s never been a bigger canvas than the new mega-gargant kit, so there’s never been a bigger opportunity to cram so much diseased and mutated horror onto a single miniature. Cut open his poor, plastic belly and stuff it to overflowing with rotting entrails and cavorting nurglings. Sculpt a mess of tentacles growing out of his face. Add sagging folds of bloated, necrotic flesh to his legs. You could settle for a mortal gargant corrupted to the service of Nurgle or go even further, stripping back his clothes and accessories to the bare flesh whilst adding antlers, a cycloptic eye and a snout to turn him into the biggest plaguebearer the realms have ever seen!
4) Orruk Warclans - The Avatar of Gorkamorka
Many of the gods and demigods of the Mortal Realms have been represented in miniature form, but as yet Gorkamorka isn’t one of them. While you wait for the big green ball of destruction to show his faces (he does have two of them) why not convert a mega-gargant to be his avatar?
Massive, muscled and mean, the mega-gargant kit is the perfect frame on which to graft a greenskin hulk worthy of the two-headed orruk god. There are multiple head options in the kit, so it’s just a case of using two of them instead of one! The noses and jaws will need a bit of green stuff work to look more orruk, then simply paint him green and you’re done. If you wanted to take things further you could borrow some design cues from the Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz factions, like bone trophies, beaten metal and a great big choppa!
3) Nighthaunt - The Great Big Boo
We’re into the top three, and things are about to get crazy! As you may have heard, Death armies have the option of taking a Gatebreaker Mega-Gargant. That’s fantastic but, when it comes to the Nighthaunt, perhaps you feel that there’s something a little incongruous about a horde of ethereal nightmares allowing a mountain of living flesh into their midst. Well, I ask you, does the Gatebreaker really need to be alive? What’s to stop the departed souls of gargants being perverted to Nagash’s cause in the same way as any other being?
Yes, that’s right - I’m proposing an ethereal Mega-Gargant. Probably the least subtle spectre since the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and just as deadly. You’d need to be either brave or insane to chop off your Mega-Gargant’s legs and replace them with billowing rags, not to mention an engineering genius to find a way to support a model of this size as if it were floating, but I believe in you. At least it’s a little easier to gouge out the Gatebreaker’s eyes and cut off his nose to form a leering, hooded skull, and after this conversion challenge the ethereal paint job will be a breeze.
2) Flesh-Eater Courts - The Abhorrant Ghoul Emperor
There’s precedent in the lore of the Flesh-eater Courts for mordants to grow monstrously large - Crypt Horrors and Crypt Flayers were once average-sized ghouls that have been allowed to gorge on the blood of their vampiric master. You can see where I’m going with this. What if the mordant in question did a lot of gorging, until they became the size of, say, a Mega-Gargant?
This is a conversion that could be very straightforward or very involved, depending on your skill level, and still look great regardless. You could achieve the basic mordant look by taking the Kraken-eater head and chopping off his nose, then sticking shards of bone through his skin. Or take it a step further and sculpt a horrifically exposed spinal column down his back. Finally, if you really want to go to town, slap a pair of Terrorgheist wings onto his back, whittle some kind of bone crown and play him as an Abhorrant Ghoul King on Terrorgheist. Et voila! You have a thoroughly imposing Abhorrant Ghoul Emperor!
1) Skaven - The Ultimate Abomination
Who you gonna call? Clan Moulder! They are, after all, the natural converters of the Age of Sigmar setting. I can very easily imagine them ‘converting’ a rat ogor into a monstrosity as tall as a city wall, or indeed a Mega-Gargant into some kind of lumbering rat-creature. Picture a Hellpit Abomination. Now picture it five times bigger and standing upright on two legs. Depending on how much of a Skaven fan you are, that image probably has you either twitching your whiskers with excitement or suppressing your gag reflex.
I’m no Master Moulder, so I can’t quite picture exactly how such a bizarre conversion might come together, but I’d start out by purchasing a Mega-Gargant and at least one Hellpit Abomination kit. I’d cut the parts off their respective sprues, pile them all up in front of me, and get to gluing bits of lumpen flesh together in whatever manner most pleases me. Would the results look like a viable creature? Doesn’t matter! For good measure, I’d probably strap some rickety wooden platforms to the beast and have a few nervous clanrats goading it on, or stitching it back up on the fly. Yes-yes!
Gargants Ho!
There we have it - just a few of the near-infinite number of ways you could convert a Mega-Gargant to fit your Age of Sigmar force. The coming weeks and months are going to be a real treat, and I for one can’t wait to see what people do with this incredible, versatile and truly massive kit.
To get your hands on your very own Mega-Gargant at a substantial discount on the RRP, order now from Firestorm Games. Ordering from Firestorm Games via this link helps keep the light of Azyr shining on the Realm of Plastic.
